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How You Can Participate?

The Helix Community is a community of multimedia enthusiasts. Some
of us are very actively involved in the day-to-day happenings in the
Helix Community, some are quietly developing great new products based
off the Helix DNA, some are trying to figure out what this
community-process and open source is all about, and others are just
plain passionate about multimedia.

There are many ways in which you can become involved in the Helix
Community. There are multiple levels of involvement and we welcome
everybody who wants to become involved at any/all levels. Even if you
are not a programmer, there are ways that you can benefit from Helix
DNA and ways to help make Helix DNA more useful to yourself and others.

Get Started...

Be an Active Listener

You can find out what is going on in the Helix Community by reading
the News pages and/or by
subscribing to the various "***-announce" mailing-lists.
These mailing lists are very low-traffic and are reserved for sending
out alerts on issues of importance to interested members of the
HelixCommunity.

Another good mailing list to subscribe to is the open-discuss mailing
list, where we discuss the overall operation of the Helix Community,
including process improvements, website enhancements, and other ways of
helping the community work together more efficiently.

Be an
End-user

You can download the compiled version of the Helix Player
and try it out, to see how it performs and works in your favorite
environment with your favorite media. Additionally, pre-compiled
binaries of Helix DNA Products: the Helix DNA Client, the Helix DNA
Server and the Helix Producer can be found at the Downloads
page. Try out these great products and let us know what you think about
it through our Forums
and Mailing
lists or by joining our IRC
channel.

Get Involved...

Be a Tester

Anybody -- developers, testers or end users -- should feel free to
alert the Helix community of issues encountered with the Helix DNA, or
ideas for ways to make the Helix DNA better for you. If you have run
into something you would like to report, you can use the Bugs page to report issues
encountered using the Helix DNA products. You can use the Bugzilla page
to understand how the Bug Submission process works. For a quick guide
on how to file a bug, take a look at "How to
file a good bug?"

Be a Developer

You can download the Helix DNA source-code and build the various
Helix DNA components by looking at the Helix DNA
Quickstart Guide. This provides all the step-by-step details of how
to get Helix DNA compiled and running on your platform.

It is also a good idea for all developers to subscribe to all the
**-dev mailing
lists, because this is the prime medium of communication for all
Helix Developers. These are high-volume mailing lists and are deeply
technical in nature, so feel free to post technical questions about
development of the Helix DNA on these mailing lists.

We've evolved a number of policies over time to help manage the
swarm of activity around the Helix Community. Our goal has always been
to make policies that are simply, consistent, and that are easy to
understand. Learn more about the site policies. If
you want to influence the evolution of these policies, feel free to
post your thoughts, idea or questions to open-discuss@helixcommunity.org

Be a Visionary

To figure out the roadmap for various Helix DNA components, you can
visit the roadmap
section. This provides some clarity about where the Helix Platform is
headed and provides information on current project plans.

If you feel that Helix DNA does not meet your current needs and you
would like to propose an extension to the Helix DNA, then please feel
free to do so. Community members are encouraged to propose and develop
new features within the Helix DNA. You can engage the Helix Community
to get feedback about your feature proposals from qualified
project-leads and also solicit other developers who might pitch in with
resources to develop your proposed feature. Figure out how to do so by
looking at the Design
Document Submission Guidelines.

You can also create a proposal for extending the Helix platform,
which, if approved, will also give you a workspace and assistance for
adding in those capabilities. If this is of interest, read up on the Helix Community New
Project Proposals.